


Gray Ghost #1000

by jerseydevious



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen, bruce is a closet nerd and dick is a good son, happy detective comics 1000 day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 12:48:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18261611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerseydevious/pseuds/jerseydevious
Summary: A milestone of Bruce's favorite superhero comic comes up and Dick is making sure Bruce enjoys it.





	Gray Ghost #1000

**Author's Note:**

> I'm posting this from a glorified tablet so I apologize for the mistakes ahead of time. Typing is so slow. Why god. 
> 
> Anyway this is short and stupid but happy 'Tec #1000 day!

Dick slid in the car and snapped his seatbelt together with a click. He grinned at Bruce, because Bruce was wearing one of those Gray Ghost shirts with the capes sewn into the shoulders—a far cry from the fire-and-waterproof kevlar monstrosity he usually carried. Bruce also looked unusually sunny, in the way that only Bruce could look sunny; his scowl was a thin, flat line, rather than a harsh downward twist of the mouth. 

 

“Today’s the day, huh,” Dick said, scrubbing his hair. Absently, he checked it in the side mirror, scrunching his face as he tilted his head back and forth. “I need to go back to my old hair gel, this new stuff’s taking all the volume out. What do you think?”

 

Bruce grunted, shifting into drive. The Manor’s driveway stretched out in front of them.

 

“Thanks for the input, it helps a lot,” Dick said, and he curled up in the seat and braced his sneakers against the dashboard. 

 

Bruce’s grunt was more in warning this time, and his hand reached over to flick Dick in the knee.  _ “Hey!” _ Dick yelped. “You don’t flick people like a normal person. You flick people like you’re arresting them for murder one. _ Ow!  _ Stop that!”

 

“You’ve brought it on yourself.”   
  


Dick chuckled, and poked Bruce in the shoulder. Bruce was content to leave it at that, his focus shifting back to the road—Dick could always read where Bruce’s attention had gone, even if Bruce had no tells. Dick took it as a sign that he could reach over and snag the aux cord. 

 

Bruce huffed. 

 

“What’s that for?” Dick asked, plugging the cord into his phone. 

 

“Nothing. Only… occasionally I question your taste.”

 

Dick smirked. “You’re gonna eat those words, old man.” Dick tapped the gray, square album on his phone, and the Buick’s speakers erupted in:  _ na na na na na na na na na na na na na Ghosted!  _

Dick used the flat of his hands like drumsticks against the dashboard. “Na na na na na na  _ Ghosted!”  _ he sang along, loud and intentionally off-key. 

 

“You are a terror,” Bruce said. 

 

After ten minutes of playing the Gray Ghost ‘60s theme on repeat, Dick switched it to the animated series theme, and then the classic ‘89 movie theme and eventually as they were pulling into the parking space of the comic shop the (apparently lesser, according to Bruce) themes from the more recent movies. It had taken Dick an hour, to find and download all of the songs onto his phone, and required a significant sacrifice of his rapidly-approaching-full storage, but it was worth it, to see Bruce smile. 

 

“—it is a good movie,” Bruce was saying, as he swung open the door and hauled himself out, “but it’s not a good Gray Ghost movie.” 

 

“I liked them,” Dick said over the roof of the car. He said it just to see Bruce roll his eyes. 

 

“Naturally,” Bruce said, inclining his head in Dick’s direction.

 

Together they came around the hood of the Buick, and Dick squawked, “What is  _ that _ supposed to mean?” 

 

Bruce’s response was to wrap an arm around Dick’s neck and rub Dick’s head with his knuckles, while Dick shrieking with laughter and fruitlessly tried to push him off. “Stop! Stop! My hair’s already messed up, you geezer!” 

 

Bruce let him go. “I was just fixing it,” he said, looking innocent, like for all the world he had not just been absolutely torturing his oldest son. 

 

Dick dashed back to the passengers’ side mirror, arranging his hair as best he could. “I swear revenge. I am vengeance. I am the darkness. I am… Gray Ghost.” 

 

“That is not quite how the quote goes.”

 

“Whatever,” Dick said, jogging back to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Bruce. He gently bumped Bruce’s with his, and Bruce bumped his in return. “You know what I meant. Lead me to your nerd palace.” 

 

“Comic shop.”

 

“Great palace of nerd!” Dick said.

 

It was, in fact, a great palace of nerd. Massive racks of glossy, bagged-and-boarded comic books lined one wall, the other, recently released comics. Dick slid one off the rack and took a deep smell from the middle. “Ah, don’t you love that, it smells like… paper.”

 

Bruce tugged it out of his hand, and flipped through it. He dropped it back on the rack with a grunt. 

 

“What if I wanted that?” Dick asked. 

 

“What was it called?”

 

“It was, uh, the… um, Determinator.”

 

Bruce laughed. Honest to goodness, open-mouth laughed. Dick wasted a moment being utterly thunderstruck before elbowing Bruce and laughing himself. 

 

Aside from them, the shop was milling with people, most of them wearing some Gray Ghost paraphernalia—Bruce’s dumb shirt fit right in. At the counter, there was a neon poster board sign that said  _ Free GRAY GHOST Hats & Capes! _ so Dick swung around to grab two hats and a cape for himself.

 

Dick found Bruce scanning a selection of Gray Ghost statues with a nonchalant eye, and he reached up and dropped the hat on Bruce’s head. Bruce raised one brow at him in question. 

 

“Now we match,” Dick said, gesturing to his felt cape and plastic hat. 

 

“You’re wearing a Beatles shirt,” Bruce said, flatly.

 

“We basically match,” Dick said, again. 

 

Despite the look he gave Dick, Bruce didn’t take off his hat. He even wore it to the register, and when the cashier asked  _ are you Bruce Wayne? Uh, oh, oh my God, can I get a—can I get a picture? _ Bruce kept the hat on for the picture. In a day or so there’d be a faux-sympathetic article on how Bruce Wayne loved the Gray Ghost because of the tragic deaths of his parents.

 

Dick slid back into the car and snapped his seatbelt with a click. Just as Bruce was about to kick it into reverse, Dick remembered himself, said, “Wait a second!” and launched himself out of his seat, darting back across the parking lot. He dodged an angrily honking car. 

 

The cashier noticed him immediately. “Oh! Hi! Did you, did you forget something?”

 

“I did,” Dick said, pulling two hundred dollars out of his wallet. “My, uh, my dad was looking at those Gray Ghost statues. I want the best one.” 

 

Dick left the store ten minutes later with a statue the size of his head, packed away inside a massive box. Bruce looked up from his phone, and his brows shot to his hairline. 

 

Dick opened the door and leaned in. “I kind of, uh, well, I got you something. Can I set it in the back?”

 

Dick didn’t wait for a reply, only swung open the door and nestled the statue in the floorboard. 

 

“You… went back for it,” Bruce said, quietly, as if he were being strangled. 

 

“You,” Dick said, shutting the back door and ducking back in the front seat, “are a mega nerd. Mucho dork. But no one would ever guess, because you don’t let yourself have those things. Because you’ve got work to do. Because you have people to save. It took two weeks just to convince you to have a little fun for the thousandth issue thing at all. You weren’t ever going to get that statue for you, so I did, because I want you to breathe a little, sometimes.”

 

Bruce swallowed. And was silent. And after a long, long silence, during which Dick briefly thought Bruce had finally had a stroke, Bruce said, “Thank you.”

 

“Are you having a stroke?” Dick blurted, in his surprise. 

 

Bruce jerked. “What? No.”

 

“You just thanked me.”

 

“Don’t get used to it,” Bruce growled, but the corner of his lip had ticked upwards, and Dick was grinning, too. 

 

Dick thought of the inevitable gossip rag article, and before his brain could turn on and stop him, Dick blurted, “Why Gray Ghost?”

 

Bruce just stared at him. 

 

Dick chuckled. “Yeah. Yeah, kind of a dumb question, huh.” 

 

“Not at all,” Bruce said, fingering the binding of the issue in his lap. “It is comforting to know that some fiction theoretically espouses the—the same principles I do. Fiction is only fiction. But to know that what I do is not in vain, that a similar story can be recognized and dispersed—well.”

 

“I hope it’s good, then,” Dick said, quietly. He hadn’t quite expected an outpouring like that, from Bruce, but was glad he’d heard it all the same.

 

“Tch. They’re using this issue to introduce a villain from the video games.”

 

“Isn’t that… a little bit tasteless?”

 

“I should have prefaced this trip by saying that as much as I… enjoy this, smart things are not always done with it.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
